Fewer bus services and reducing the number of full-time drivers are among cost cutting measures being introduced by Translink, it has emerged.
Although frequency is being reduced, Translink said no routes will be cancelled.
So, in essence, rather than three buses coming all at once, there will just be two…
I have absolutely had it with Translink. For the last two+ years, I have attempted to talk to them, to reason with them regarding opening up their data. I firmly believed that if they opened their data and made it easier to get access to their timetables and routes then more people would take buses and trains.
We have worked through DETI, DRD and other organisations. We have attempted to deal with their arcane IT infrastructure and their obfuscatory marketing department. We have spoken to their management, to their mid-level managers. We have even been vaguely complimentary about their awful web site.
But at every turn, Translink have blocked our access to the data. They gave an instance of the data to OpenDataNI, a project within the DFP (which has since fallen by the wayside with the cuts) and have flatly refused to give the local community access to use the (now outdated) timetable and route data for anything other than developer demos. The local developer and designer community invested hundreds of man hours of work into decoding the archaic file formats, into developing an API and a database, in writing code to make the data accessible and developing designs for user interfaces for the web and mobile. All of that effort has been wasted, all of that effort has been blocked.
Translink, an active go-co (government-owned corporation) have systematically blocked local industry from using the innovation they were giving freely to create opportunity and enterprise.
So, in light of todays news, I am sickened. I give up.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Your heart was in the right place but I don’t believe opening up the data will make any or much difference to Translink’s figures (important for Translink to note that I don’t see it going down or up, ie you’re certainly not going to lose anything by opening up).
However this kind of raw material is what developers need to be creative in a constructive way, it’s a path to job creation and money flowing into NI. The DUP had something about this in their manifesto but I haven’t heard or seen anything since. It would be great if the public sector behemoth in NI just relaxed it’s strangle hold on this sort of thing, data, just a little. There’s a lot of potential, but it’s stymied.
PS The translink data format was the standard for UK transport, ATCO-CIF. The newer standard is TransXChange but it’s maybe a stretch to call ATCO-CIF archaic.
The ATCO format was described as ‘deprecated’ back in 2009. That’s what I mean by archaic.
Very disappointing Matt to hear where this has gone despite your best efforts!!
One of our developers had been working on a Translink app, just released this week in fact.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itranslink-journey-planner/id454643767?mt=8
I don’t believe he is storing the timetables himself however.
Some slight issues with trademarks and copyrights there.
Every time I use the NI Translink bus journey planner it literally makes me scream.
I’ve taken the trouble of writing to Translink to tell them what I (and everyone else) hate about the stupid thing & they wrote an insulting note back to me.
They are a backward organisation & I don’t know how they manage to survive in our modern world…oh yeah…it’s Northern Ireland, isn’t it?